Saturday, August 01, 2015

In the mid-late 1980s, Hasbro created two lines of absurdly large watches for kids. The first, called Watchimals, featured furry wristbands with animal heads that would open to reveal a digital watch inside. There were twelve characters to choose from: a bear, butterfly, elephant, peacock, mouse, toucan, dog, dragonfly, goldfish, moose, snail, and unicorn--which were primarily marketed for girls (a related line of products, Wearimals, were furry animals that could be clipped onto clothes, hair, etc). But the focus of this post is Hasbro's second line of cumbersome timepieces called Slime Time, which featured two colour variants of three characters--a snake, bat, and frog--that also opened up to reveal a digital watch inside (and were marketed for boys).

back panel

These days, Slime Time watches are very rare indeed; occasionally one will show up on ebay, at a ridiculous price, and even Google doesn't come up with much (so that should tell you something). This is most likely because kids probably found them cool to wear for about a week, then tossed the creature portion aside and just kept the digital watch.

The earliest record I found advertising Slime Time watches was on February 18, 1987, and they were designated as 'new' at the time. Toys 'R' Us was selling them for $9.97, while Simpsons inflated their price to $12.99 (that's about $19-$24 in today's dollars). It's hard to gauge how popular they were, but the price held steady around the $9-$10 mark for the better part of that year, up until Eaton's discounted them by 50% in mid-December--just in time for Christmas! Alas, by December 1988, remaining stock was being liquidated by the likes of Towers department store for just $3.

I've included many photos below of the bat version (purple variant)--because I have one in my collection. It makes for an interesting display piece, and sits alongside my Chauve-Souris watch by Swatch (produced in 1999). I'm still on the lookout for the black bat variant; considering the obsessive collector I am, I'll likely try to hunt down all six of these bloody things!

I'm not sure why this didn't post before but I recently got a hold of a black bat and purple bat New in damaged box if you're still looking! Not trying to get rich off them just would be down to help you get close to completing your set!